Facts and Figures – The Internet Filter

It’s come to my attention that some lobbyists don’t agree with my figures of the slowdown being upwards of 70% in the worst case, and have dredged up some figures of their own:

ACL managing director Jim Wallace said those campaigning against the filter were selectively quoting figures.

”This is quoting the high end figure, when equally one could say that Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) trials have shown that one filter product slowed internet performance by less than two per cent, and three products slowed it by less than 30 per cent with technology improving all the time,’

…

Mr Wallace said the Christian Lobby believed claims that filtering was ineffective were unfounded, with ACMA trials showing about 92 per cent of illegal and inappropriate content was blocked, and over- blocking was less than three per cent.

”Rather than rallying on the basis of misinformation, people should be giving this very worthwhile proposal their full support particularly ISPs who profit so much from ordinary Australians,” he said.

Let’s be honest and state that neither of us know exactly how much this filter will slow everything down and that any solution that is currently being tested now will not behave the same way when it is implemented. Sure, we could get away with a minor amount of slow down but as Jim Wallace has shown the majority of programs will more then likely exceed 20%. It could be all the way up to 29% if we read far enough into his vague statements.

So let’s take a quick look at what this will cost Australian broadband users in real dollars using real figures. Australia has approximately 5 million broadband subscribers according to the OECD. Additionally they have provided some figures based on average price, with Australia’s coming out to approximately US$61 (AUD$89) per month. This comes out to roughly AUD$445 million per month that Australians spend on broadband connections.

If we take the best estimates of a 2% slowdown that is equivalent to all those subscribers losing 2% of their bandwidth per month, effectively costing Australians approximately $9 million a month in lost services. That’s at the very best of the figures quoted, coming out at a grand total cost to all Australians of around $107 million a year. If we go for what appears to be the majority of cases, say 20% to make it easy, it will cost us $90 million per month which over a one year period will total over $1 billion.

That’s right, if we end up with a filter that slows down only consumer level broadband by 20% it will cost Australians a billion dollars. I shudder to think of the figure that I would get if I did the calculations including high end business and government links.